The use of wireless communication devices to send and receive information has become increasingly prominent. Typically, an operating system is installed on a wireless communication device to manage and coordinate the various functions that the device performs. In addition to the operating system, various applications are often available for the wireless communication device that are designed to execute on the operating system. A user of a wireless communication device typically downloads an application from an application server and installs the application on the device for execution by the operating system. Such applications are frequently developed by third parties that are different from the developer of the operating system. Some examples of applications available for wireless communication devices include news, sports, and weather applets, games, media players, business tools, educational software, social networking applications, and many more.
Typically, when the user of the wireless communication device opens an application, the operating system executes the processing instructions of the application to present the application content to the user. The application may be designed to utilize data transfer capabilities of the wireless communication device, location-based services, short message service (SMS) text messaging, accelerometers, camera equipment, and other features of modern wireless devices. However, applications written by unscrupulous authors may attempt to exploit the operating system for malicious purposes, which poses a security risk when executing an unknown or untested application.